The FLAIMS job architecture
Four levels, one question per level: who sets the frame, who structures the topic, who answers for it, who supports.
FLAIMS has no hierarchy of people. Dependencies exist between tasks, never between people. Who holds which job says nothing about who has anything to say to whom. The job hierarchy orders topics and responsibility, and it may be deep, because accountability stays flat: every Core Job owes its accountability directly to governance, no matter where it hangs.
Steward
Who sets the frame?
One design role per letter
Sets the guardrails, rules and degrees of freedom of their letter, and they apply immediately. Cuts the anchor structure, together with governance. No management power, no outcome accountability for the work below.
Anchor Core Job
Who structures the topic?
A Core Job in anchor position
An entirely normal Core Job that hangs directly below the Steward and structures a field. It implements itself and holds full responsibility for everything it has not handed over. In a small company its holder does everything in it alone.
Core Job
Who answers for it?
Full accountability, one owner
The smallest complete unit of responsibility: purpose, outcomes, responsibilities, decision competence. Challenged and ratified with governance. Can be held by several people, exactly one is owner.
Joblet
Who supports?
Freely chosen by the Core Job
Takes on concrete tasks for a Core Job and pays into one of its responsibilities. The accountability stays with the Core Job. Governance is not involved in Joblets.
Setting the frame is not leading
A Steward tells nobody what to do. They say within which guardrails the work happens. Whoever is accountable for the work does not have to invent the frame themselves, and whoever sets the frame has nothing to command. That is the separation with which the model manages without a new layer of leadership.
Accountability moves fully or not at all
Whoever holds a Core Job holds A. If an Anchor Core Job or any Core Job commissions a new Core Job, A goes with it completely. The commissioning job keeps only the residual: what it has not spun off, plus the coherence of its field. Joblets hold R. Shared accountability does not exist; where two people share something, nobody decides in the end.
Rules of thumb for the cut
- A topic has exactly one home. Double ownership is a design flaw, not a cooperation problem.
- Normative topics anchor where independence has to be protected, and not where they come up operationally. Data protection, occupational safety and compliance therefore sit in S; the execution can hang anywhere.
- With several product or service lines the Conway cut applies: one Core Job per line. As the line grows, further Core Jobs that belong to it hang below.
- If two lines draw on the same foundation, the foundation becomes its own Core Job with one holder. The lines are its interfaces.
- Whoever measures is not measured: measurement, review and assessment never sit with the measured.
Decisions are made where the knowledge sits
Decisions belong in the Core Job that feels the consequences. Heavy decisions that touch several spaces of responsibility run through the gravity mechanics: they are formed with those affected, decided and recorded in the decision log. Factual conflicts between jobs are decided by an HGD of those affected. No Steward and no boss, who does not exist anyway.